Leadership Training Institute
Leadership Training Institute (LTI)
Our LTI Fellows take advantage of the wisdom of various educators, life skills coaches, and community leaders through the use of personal assessment and leadership style tools, interactive teaching, and panel discussions. Upon graduation, all LTI Fellows are more prepared to lead in their communities. Specifically, LTI provides our Fellows with the necessary skills to be leaders, active participants, and teachers within their communities, careers, and families.
Past discussion topics include the following:
- Empire State of Mind: Creating Success Tools in Order to Uplift Communities
- Your Leadership Brand: Understanding Your Values, Style, and Professional Identity
- The Power of Your Emotions: Emotional Intelligence and Professional and Personal Success
- Navigating Diversity: Empowering Our Communities and Ourselves
During the institute, each Fellow completes training sessions on the following topics, among others:
- Leadership styles and team-building
- Professional self-awareness and brand-building
- Sensitivity/cultural issues
- Public speaking
- Emotional intelligence
- How to be a good mentor/How to be a good mentee
Leadership styles and team-building
Students participate in exercises designed to help them determine their own leadership styles. They also learn a variety of leadership styles and the circumstances in which they should employ certain leadership strategies to get the best output from their team. Students learn the importance of being flexible and learning to adapt quickly to their environments and the many challenges that leaders face. Before and after completion of the program, students are asked to lead a team in the completion of various tasks. Each student’s performance is assessed at the completion of the program.
Professional self-awareness and brand-building
Students learn about marketing themselves and their talents as well as creating appropriate public images of themselves. Through a series of exercises, students learn to appreciate any discrepancies between their strengths and talents and the public’s view of their abilities. The purpose of the program is to help students understand how others perceive their abilities and understand the importance of ensuring that their professional image is not a hindrance. Students also learn how to create the image that they want so that they can reach their highest potential and be positive role models for peers and members of their communities.
Sensitivity/cultural issues
Because being able to relate to all types of people is integral to being a successful leader, capable of leading a diverse team, students receive training on tolerance and the benefits of background and thought diversity. Students take a survey course on various types of diversity, including religious, racial, ethnic, sexual orientation, and economic diversity. They learn how to react to and appreciate different types of people and the possibility of specific needs relating to such measures of diversity. They also learn to see differences in a way that will allow them to treat everyone equally.
Public speaking
Students learn how to be impactful and dynamic speakers. Specifically, they learn how to create and organize a powerful message that is unique, relevant, and socially important. The training focuses on confidence, presentation, organization, and other helpful hints about how to be a memorable speaker who can influence and move crowds with words. Students learn how to engage their audiences, encourage questions, demonstrate a willingness to hear new ideas while showing confidence in their own convictions, and answer challenging questions with confidence and poise.
Emotional intelligence
Students learn that there is more to success than book smarts, and that is the ability to successfully navigate and respond to the personalities, egos, and special needs of those around them. They learn how to assess their own emotions and the emotions of those around them in a way that will inform their dealings with each person with whom they interact. Students learn how a higher emotional intelligence will help them truly lead a team of diverse people with diverse needs, ranging from cultural diversity to those with certain professional needs and personal sensitivities.
Graduation
Each graduate of the Leadership Training Institute:
- receives one of several completion certificates based on performance
- joins the LTI Alumni community
- is eligible to receive an Excellence in Leadership Training Scholarship